Soulprint
by mz lynx
Summary: The call comes on a beautiful spring day, and suddendly nothing will ever be the same.


Disclaimer: Do not own.

**Soulprint**

It's one of those heartbreakingly beautiful spring days, where everything is so new and alive that it almost hurts. Rory soaks it all up, the warmth and the sun and the peace, fills her soul with light and life and love, and just **breathes** in a way winter doesn't allow.

When the phone rings she almost doesn't answer. Dinner's minutes from being served, and she needs to get the children ready. (Later she will wonder what if she hadn't, knowing that it would have been so much worse.)

It's Liz, and at first Rory's too busy wonder why **Jess' mom** would call **Rory** to pick up on the distress in her voice. When she does her first thought is that Jess must be sick, or that he's been in an accident. She even manages to reach a third possibility, that something bad has happened to his wife Erica or their daughter.

It's worse. He's gone. **Jess is gone.** Dead. No one knows what's happened – he was found in the Truncheon, just laying there, dead on the floor.

The irony? He's been in her head all day. She thinks of him quite often, yes, but not like today. Today he's been on her mind from just minutes after waking to when she gets the call at five in the afternoon. She was going to call him, once the day quieted down. She still felt guilty, after all, for letting too long pass since her last e-mail or phone call. For not taking the time to call him just the week before – for his birthday. For all the times she'd put it off, thinking he'd still be there when her life calmed down. As the ones you love always will be.

There had just been too much happening in her life, too much to deal with – and Jess wasn't a fire to put out. Only, turns out he was. Turns out **his** fire has been put out. Because Jess was always a fire in al the best ways. He was always so full of warmth and passion, and even when it wasn't for her any more, it was still there for her to warm herself by.

A part of her thinks she'll never be fully warm ever again now.

She's never lost anyone she loves before, not really. Yes, she'd buried her grandfather a few years ago, but it had not been the same. Richard Gilmore had been gone for years by the time his body had finally given up, and his passing had been a blessing for everyone, him included. But Jess... Jess who hadn't even reached forty, who'd had so much potential, so much love. Jess, with everything to live for and so much left to give.

No. She's never lost anyone like this before, and suspects she never will.

She stammers her condolences, useless words, asks to be notified about the funeral and hangs up. Then Rory breaks. She and Jess might not talk that much, or often, but he still has a **huge** place in her heart. He might not be the one that got away, but that doesn't change the fact that he could so easily have been her everything.

The truth is that Rory still loves him, loves him more than anyone outside her family and Lane, and can't ever imagine not loving him. That they both married other people doesn't change anything: she loves him, and believes he loved her. They just were never as good together as they could have been, as they would have needed to be in order to stay together. They were in different places, never in the right place at the same time.

And that's exactly how it should be.

No matter how much she's always loved Jess, the one thing she's the happiest about when it comes to him is that he met his wife. (With the fact that she herself met him all those years ago coming a very close second.) After all, it's been obvious from the first time he mentioned her, over a much too rare lunch, that Jess was completely gone for this girl. That he would no longer be **hers**.

For a fleeting second Rory had felt hurt, betrayal, loss – even though she herself had just finished telling him about her new-ish boyfriend, the man she's now married to – only for it to be replaced with an overwhelming sense of happiness. This girl? She could be everything Jess wanted and needed. And she had been.

Rory had loved Jess just enough to be happy for him, just as she'd loved Erica for that, for loving Jess the way he deserved. For giving Jess everything, for being so much better for him than she herself had ever managed to be.

Still. She's imagined what her life with Jess would be, not just while they were together but often both before and after. He has, after all, been the one she compared all others to in so many ways and for so long. Has been the one man her heart always returned to – up to the day she met the man who is now her husband.

She stopped dreaming of the two of them together years ago, but... Some things can never be completely erased. The knowledge that Jess and her could have been each others forever is one of those things. The quiet moments when she finds herself dwelling on the never quite fulfilled possibility of them. The way her heart stopped, stuttered and clenched when she'd held his daughter in her arms and heard that sweet voice call out "mommy". The way she'd **ached**, knowing that she could have been.

So many things she could have been. That **they** could have been. And at the top of that list is a better friend.

And now it will never be. She will never again get to try and convince Jess about how great Ayn Rand is. Never again will she scoff as he tries to force her to try Hemingway just **one more time**. Never again will she get to hug him, and tell him what she never said often enough: that she loves him. That he's one of the most important people in her life. That he has helped her more than he could ever imagine, just by living. Just by being Jess. That she is grateful for every minute of life they've shared. That she would have been fortunate to **spend every minute** ofher life with him. That she's so, so happy that he found Erica.

That her life will never be the same because of him.

And now, it will never be the same because he will never be there again.

She wraps her arms around herself, trying and failing to hold in the sobs, feels the tears stream down her face. Jess is gone. Jess is **gone**. And now part of her is too.

_i send you off_

_releasing your heart_

_i know that you will hear_

_and smiling for me again_

_and please give me the strength_

_stay by my side – be here_

_you know you'll always be alive_

_because of the soulprint you left on me_

Soulprint – Introitus

Love you always J

Always


End file.
